In Their Place
by Kitty Levina
Summary: Hermione knows many things. Like why Harry might have loved Remus so much. Post-OotP, though not by much.


**Disclaimer:** Disclaimer as usual. Please, Ms. Rowling, please don't eat me or my cats--I don't own anything Harry Potter, I swear!

**Summary:** Hermione knows a lot of things, including why Harry loved Sirius so much, anyway.

**Archive:** Sure, just drop me an email so I can come and visit.

**A/N: **The fic is gen, but Hermione notes a relationship between Remus and Sirius, so . . . that means slash, or at least mentioned slash. If that's not your cuppa, keep moving, keep moving, that's a good reader.

**In Their Place**

Hermione Granger knew a lot of things.

She knew, for example, that there would never be a funeral for Sirius Black, not if it was left up to the Ministry to do. The Ministry was too busy covering up that six Hogwarts students and several other society cast offs had battled Voldemort on its own grounds, not to mention with the fact that Voldemort was indeed back to begin with, to go about clearing the name of a criminal hardly anyone cared about anymore, anyway. As far as the wizarding world was concerned, Sirius was still a mass-murderer on the run, and no one seemed to have batted an eyelash about him in over a year.

Hermione knew that the few who did know the truth had been dispersed back to their separate corners too fast to consider even whether a lit candle or a few lilies would be appropriate. The children, including herself, had been shipped back to Hogwarts with due haste. Even in her own mind, "children" came with quotation marks and a slight smudge of malice. They were no longer children. They might be young; they might need life experience; there even might be things that they didn't understand, but by no stretch of the imagination were they any longer children. Hermione knew that she might have thrown a snit at Dumbledore herself for still classifying them as such, if she had not needed to be counted on by Harry and the others as Sensible Reasonable Hermione.

Hermione knew this was one of the reasons she was Harry and Ron's mutual best friend, and she did not begrudge their need for her to remain logical and thoughtful. This was their world, and they each had their place in it. Hermione knew that her place was to help them plot and plan; to read and research; to be the steady note of grace in their otherwise highly skewed world. Though her loyalty was second to no one's, not even Ron's, Hermione understood that Harry needed her for her strength, just as he needed Ron for the honesty of his trust. She knew that if the time came, when the time came, Harry would inevitably choose Ron's loyalty over her own, just as it had been Ron chosen to fulfill the second task of the Tri-Wizard, not her—and not just because she was being used as Victor's pawn, either. Hermione felt no envy over that fact, only duty. It would be her job, after all, to keep them all alive long enough for Ron's loyalty to do anyone, especially Harry, any good. Hermione knew that if she were to face a boggert any time soon, it would likely show her Ron's dead body, over which she was uncertain whether or not she, or Harry, could carry on.

Hermione knew that it was her impulse to plan ahead diligently but follow willingly that had gotten her sorted into Gryffindor in the first place. For a certain amount of time, she had wondered why she hadn't been sorted with the studious, intelligent Ravenclaws. Surely she would have felt at home there; no one there would mock, or even affectionately tolerate, her study schedules and neat spiral notebooks. Eventually she had realized that in her own way, she was just as brash has Harry or Ron, that she had a burning desire to _know_, to protect, to seek, and that it was just usually at the request of Harry that she would fulfill it. Gryffindors didn't need to be stupid, only brave, and no matter what Professor Snape said, those two things were not the same thing.

Hermione knew that they had all been packed off to the end of the year feast and shipped back to their homes in part to keep them safe, and in part because no one had yet figured out what to do with them. Harry had been sent right back to the Dursleys, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Hermione had recently done some very extensive reading on blood charms, and come to the conclusion that Dumbledore's definition of _home_ was either very loose or very clinical. She agreed that Petunia Dursley was Lily Potter's sister. But that Harry had ever called 4 Privet Drive _home_, she doubted. At least, not since Hogwarts. Even if Harry were to be expelled from the wizarding world in the next ten seconds, with no money, no friends, and no where to go, Hermione seriously doubted he would return to Privet Drive. In fact, she knew he would starve in a back alley somewhere, and it seemed to her a rather messy business that Dumbledore was so insistent that Harry did indeed call the Dursley house home, especially since she knew that he didn't. Hermione knew that for Harry, home was only one place, and that was Hogwarts, and for a short time, it was only one person, and that was Sirius.

Hermione knew that Harry's love for Sirius had been fierce, and that Sirius' devotion to Harry had been just as intense. What she had not known for a long while was why that would be. On Sirius' part, the puzzle was a little clearer. Sirius had known Harry, at least a very young version of him. He would be invested in Harry as a person, and as his last, best link to James Potter. That his feelings would be so strong as to facilitate his escape from Azkaban and his virtual stalking of Harry for almost a year, just to see him, to catch faint glimmers of Harry's life, and then to sustain him as he continued either on the run or trapped in Grimmauld Place, was one of the facts of life that truly staggered Hermione's ability to absorb information.

Hermione knew, of course, that Harry was not the only thing to sustain Sirius during those two years. She had spent enough time at Grimmauld Place over last summer to learn that the affection between Sirius and Professor Lupin could not just be attributed to their school day friendship. She knew that the fact that they went to bed within minutes of each other, one first, then the other, was not a coincidence. She knew that when he fixed the tea, Sirius would automatically slip two sugar cubes into Lupin's before handing over the mug. She knew that the Professor's hand always hovered around the small of Sirius' back when Sirius told a story about James, so that it could come down and rub small, soothing, concentric circles if necessary. She knew that as much as she had ached for Harry upon Sirius' death that she ached for Professor Lupin just as much. Hermione knew that fate was tempted to give her the same title as Lupin: Sole Survivor, and she did not like it, not at all. She knew that as much as the Professor and Sirius might have loved each other, that Sirius would have done anything for Harry, and in the end, anything had included dying. Hermione knew well that dying might be included in her "anything," too.

Hermione knew that Harry loved Sirius beyond the fact that Sirius was one of his father's best friends. Professor Lupin was, too, and Hermione knew that Harry loved the Professor in his own way, but it was as a mentor, an older friend, and that it was not the way he loved Sirius. It had not been Professor Lupin, after all, whom Voldemort had used to plot against Harry. It seemed to Hermione that the word itself, _godfather_, seemed imbued with a magical spell all its own. What else could account for the blind, almost violent devotion that Harry showed to the man who had once been James Potter's best friend? As soon as Sirius had offered Harry a home, Harry had fallen desperately in love, a love that was _in loco parentis, _and even though that promise never materialized, Harry's love remained. She knew that love could not be explained even by brand new brooms or stories of parents.

Hermione knew the bond could be explained in other ways: that Sirius was more like Harry than Lupin was, easier to identify with; that he had been closer to James and therefore Harry felt closer to him, too. But mostly, Hermione knew that Harry had loved Sirius so because Sirius had automatically and unconditionally loved Harry, not just from the time he had seen him, scrawny and underfed and furious and thirteen years old, but from the time Harry had been born, probably from even before then. And Hermione knew that "unconditional" was all that Harry ever wanted; that he would cling to that the way a plant seeks sunlight. Unconditional love, unconditional loyalty, unconditional friendship. Unconditional seemed like such a big word, like a huge, vast tide of emotion, but Hermione knew that in reality, it was a small, simple thing to give. The simplest thing of all, really. To know Harry, as Harry, and not as The-Boy-Who-Lived, or as a weapon against Voldemort, or as a student, or any of the other five hundred and twenty definitions that people would press upon him—that was all Harry ever wanted. Hermione knew that Sirius was able to give that to Harry, to share that with him, and for that, Hermione was grateful, and a bit surprised that she hadn't seen it sooner.

Hermione knew that was why she was now sitting in the kitchen of 12 Grimmauld Place, two and a half weeks into the summer vacation. Professor Lupin was making tea at the stove behind her. She had tried being home as best she could; she had read, watched the telly, helped out at her parents' practice. But when her father had said five days ago at dinner that maybe she should owl Ron to see what was happening in her world, she had been relieved. Hermione had not owled Ron, however; she had instead sent a short note to Remus Lupin, and found herself on the doorstep of Grimmauld Place a day later. She was the only Hogwarts student there; Molly and Arthur Weasley came and went regularly, both together and separately, but had left their brood at the Burrow for now, though Hermione knew since she was there already and that Harry would be in a few weeks, the others were soon to follow. Otherwise, the house was went through cycles of sleep and wakefulness, chaos when there were Order meetings or members there, quiet when it was just her and Professor Lupin and Tonks or another member or so.

Hermione knew that even the relative quiet would be gone once the Weasleys and Harry would come to stay, so she took advantage of the quiet while she could. She sat at the kitchen table, roughly sketching out plans—flowers, music, readings. She was not sure if Professor Lupin would want to speak, and she did not plan on asking him to. She had already spoken to McGonagall and Dumbledore, who had both agreed. Hermione knew that Harry must be blaming himself, isolated and alone as he was at the Dursleys, so ready to sink into fury and misery, so she sent him an owl every day, asking questions or babbling about plans. If he thought she was being silly, he did not say so; if he was angry or grateful, he did not say so. She thought herself lucky to be getting any replies from Harry at all, and she saved them all.

Hermione knew that Sirius Black was going to have a memorial service in three weeks. She knew because she was the one who was planning it. Hermione dropped two sugar cubes into the mug of tea Remus had just poured himself as she got up from the table and went out back to the yard.


End file.
